Intelligent Design?

One of the speakers in the recent Army War College Strategy Conference, Session II made a comment to the effect that the US Constitution by its checks and balances makes the development of a “national strategy” difficult.  As a simple matter of fact, a national strategy consensus of sufficient detail to pass through the operational design process has never happened in the US, and very few times elsewhere.  At best, national strategies are wish lists subject to the winds of war.

http://gordonswar.blogspot.com/2007/10/there-are-more-wheels-than-cogs.html

01

One of the best examples in US history is that adopted by Abraham Lincoln whose strategy carefully avoided the appearance that the Confederacy actually existed as a legal entity.  He did not wish to run the risk of France and/or Great Britain would openly support a bona fide nation recognized under international law.  His objective was to reunify the nation, bind up its wounds, with charity for all and malice for none. 

Birth of a Nation-CSA

John Wilkes Booth fired the shot that destroyed the South for a century by killing Lincoln, giving the Radical Republicans cause to nullify Lincoln’s strategy of binding into one of tearing the bonds that lingered in the South in Reconstruction.  As a result, the South did not celebrate the 4^th of July nor sign the National Anthem until the Spanish American War when old Confederate units and officers were called to the colors. 

02

The assertion that the Union fought to free the slaves is a post war approbation, as slavery was not ended until the 13^th Amendment.  At the present time, fruits of Reconstruction carried by Confederate diaspora have produced a political monologue that excludes all Amendments to the Constitution after the 12^th as genuine. Regardless of the merits of this argument, the salient fact is that it is still in play 150 years after the fact.  

The “national strategy” of the US in the Spanish American War morphed from a revenge on the Spanish for the “sinking” of the USS Maine, now seen as an accident, into a global war between Spain and the US.  Theodore Roosevelt, CMOH, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy issued orders of no authority for Admiral Dewey to attack Spain in the Philippines allegedly to support Aguinaldo and his Filipino Insurrection against Spain.  My grandfather was a cavalryman in the continued operations against Aguinaldo.   

Oil for the lamps of China?

 003

The US wound up with a Pacific empire that included several other islands and a concession in Shanghai governed by a US governor, a regiment of US Marines and a regiment of US Infantry, that plus the Asiatic Fleet on Chinese rivers.  What national interests in this relatively brief period of American Imperialism, came after the fact of individual initiative in the best interest of American commerce, the life blood of nations.  Like “Oil for the Lamps of China”:

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/140812/Oil-For-The-Lamps-Of-China-Original-Trailer-.html

004

When it became clear that Japan was going to sail south to compete the encirclement of China, and weeks before Pearl Harbor, the US pulled its troops out of Shanghai and its fleet from China and transferred them to the Philippines. Britain shifted theirs to Singapore where they and American troops became prisoners of war of the Japanese   While the Navy had plans to relieve the Philippines in case of a Japanese seizure by a drive across the Pacific to meet the Japanese fleet in a head to head surface battle in which round eyes shot better than those with a cant. The Japanese had the same plan in mind with a different cant in mind.  Yamamoto had a different plan in mind which upset everyone else’s designs.

005

The usual pre-war budget struggle of the Army Air Corps (USAAC) of bombers versus battleships, had a boost from FDR, who instead of sending the Atlantic Fleet then conducting anti-submarine exercises with U-Boats as training aids, decided to send 100 B-17 bombers to cover the South China Sea from the depredations of the Japanese fleet.   About half the bombers made it.  In order to strengthen the ferry routes for the B-17’s to fly from Hawaii to the Philippines the Navy transported Army fighters to the islands of Wake, Midway and Guam to protect the bombers.  

That is why the Carriers and the fast battle fleet was not in Pearl Harbor on December 7^th, 1941.  The Wild Card Trumps All Bidding.

US fleet submarines were forbidden to raise their periscopes to attack “enemy” ships in exercises on pain of relief of command.   On December 8, they were let loose on the Japanese with a vengeance truly poetic. Then again, the Mark XIV torpedo failed more often than not based on Navy acquisition policies in Washington, DC.

006

Field Marshal Douglas MacArthur, Commonwealth of the Philippines, returned to active duty as a LTG, ordered US forces not to open fire on the Japanese unless bombs were actually seen to be landing on Philippine soil. This was nine hours after Japan had attacked.  B-17 bombers aloft with bomb loads ready to fly to Formosa where Japanese bombers and fighters were still grounded, were told to return to base.  They were caught on the ground being refueled and re-armed.

As of December 8, 1941 the Congress voted that a “state of war (had) existed” between the US and Japan.  There was as of that date not a sufficient majority in the Congress to declare war on Germany. Hitler solved that problem, which allowed FDR to place a higher priority on defeating Germany than the Japanese who had started the war.  The national strategies became subject to a series of conferences, the first of these was on HMS Prince of Wales on August 14, 1941 between Churchill and FDR that resulted in the Atlantic Charter that outlined some of the principles that eventually developed into the UN Charter by War’s end.  The Allied Conferences in Casablanca and Yalta served as adjustments in national interests followed by the Potsdam Conference to define the next half century.

The Conduct of WW2 from an operational or tactical point of view were not affected by these conferences while the reverse is closer to the truth.  WW 2 started with an invasion of Poland by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany who split Poland as they chose.  WW 2 ended on a battleship in Tokyo Bay while Hiroshima and Nagasaki were radioactive with Soviet representatives as allies.   

The Score Card Shifts:  Serbia started WW 1 with the assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo, and the war ended with Serbia on the Allied side.  Germany had to admit guilt at Versailles for starting the war started by Serbia.  The key issue that put Cousin George vs Cousin Wilhelm was that of Grand Fleet versus High Seas Fleet, the latter mutinied and brought Germany down, and which ‘saved face” by scuttling at Scapa Flow”.   Go figure.

 On January 12, 1950 Secretary of State Dean Acheson made a speech before the National Press Club in Washington DC that did not include Korea as within US “defense perimeter”.  Accordingly Stalin and Kim Il-sung invaded South Korea on June 15, 1950. 

Korean War, an Oversight of Oversight

South Vietnam was created and dissolved by International Conferences which did not involve South Vietnamese involvement.   A successful air was and Stability Operation in Vietnam were defeated by domestic activists of the enemy cause in our national capitol. 

The national interest then shifted with a vengeance to the defense of the Fulda Gap which had laid open with hollow forces for a decade.  High on the national priority was the defense against Soviet forces across the North German Plains which is really a swamp drained by extensive canals and irrigation systems.

008

The point of all this is that Murphy’s Law is the First Law of War.  Everything that could go wrong went except when the wrong thing was done first that turned out right.  The pre-War national strategy was built on bars of soap, that when whetted became slippery.   Nothing should be taken for granted. The real questions are what capabilities are needed to achieve what effects on selected populations to achieve what ends (threats included).  

In Laying Plans, para 18, Sun Tzu said that all war is based on deception.  That necessarily includes inducing self-deception in the right minds to do the wrong thing at their wrong time.  In even broader terms, all conflict is biologically oriented and psychologically bent in accordance with the culture and technologies at hand.  Any "cross domain synergy" that does not leverage the psychological and sociological paradigms of the target audiences is not going to be pretty. For exemplars, please note the successful North Vietnamese sabotage of the US will to win, and the current sophisticated renovation of the Comintern in Russian national interest, the Russian energy and defense industries.

A retired US Army LTG on BBC recently noted that some rotational forces might be needed in the current imbroglio with Russia over the issue of Crimea and the Ukraine.  The essence of rotational modular brigades is personnel management which trumps effects, threats and capabilities.  The bridging of gaps created by the stresses between effects, threat, and capabilities has fallen on the ingenuity of the troops involved to succeed in spite of modular management.  Been there, done that.

 

010

What, then, is the purpose of so much time and energy over Logical Lines, Centers of Gravity, Design, and Strategy when the default deployment algorithm is a one trick pony?   At face value, Parkinson’s Laws apply particularly the Law of Inverse Relevance also known as the Law of Triviality.   This holds that the more effort spent in a decision process is inversely related to its importance. His fictive example is the corporate board that approves a massive plant rebuilding with minimal discussion, while the Employees Bicycle Shed requires a special committee after long and ardent discussions.

Based on the observations of over fifty years in public and military service, inverse relevance is only the tip of the iceberg.   The more informative observation is that which is bragged about is of minor importance, and that which is complained about or blamed is the real agenda.   In short, the current discussions over national interest and the design process is at best hot air, at worst, a smokescreen

011

In order to get military officers out of the critical path to combat effectiveness, Donald Rumsfeld put untrained and inexperienced civilian bureaucrats in the role of the General Staff.  Where once, this extended down to the tactical level where the MDMP process resulted in a five paragraph field order including task organization.  This eclectic process has been condemned as “stove pipe” and replaced with pre-packaged task organizations packaged on the A-Ring in the Table of Organization and Equipment.  Now we have a four and a half paragraph order and no task organization. This notion is so farfetched that the field simply ignored it and cannibalized their units to restore task flexibility. 

There was nothing broken in the MDMP until it was “fixed” by transformation. Un-fixing goes to an older more successful war fighting model, training and operations in a constant state of flux dictated by mandatory linkage of all units into real or contingency plans in real places with an audit trail from barracks to battlefield.  This was once called the Capstone Program (pre-OIF) which linked all US and associated allied units to one or more real contingency plans.  As exercised, this process created a laboratory in which internal processes were stressed with a change in resources or demands (missions). 

012

Eliminates all General Officers and Reservist/Guard from TOE

These capabilities to task organize in chaotic circumstances in an all-inclusive task organization produced a refined Military Decision Making Process under specific and changing pressures.  The restoration of mission orientation can be enhanced in individual and small units by linkages with ongoing virtual wars suitable for interface with larger units command post exercises (CPX).  In these exercises, it is the planning that counts more than the plan itself.  Desert Storm proved that, as did the original invasion of Iraq, before Transformation.

It is the Chain of Command and Coordination that is the Center of Gravity of war fighting, a chain that may be little more than chain than command, as it is the framework through task organization builds on.  And it is the chain that must be kept primarily operational in anything except administrivia. 

Gordon S Fowkes, KCTJ

LTC USA RET

The Real Incredibles - Our Troops

GWOT in perspective – Five years later

The War in Iraq and Afghanistan, triggered by 9/11 hasn’t been won, but neither has it been lost, the final verdict may take years to assess, and even then there will be arguments over the verdict. Saddam has been removed from power, but the Baathists and the Republican Guard haven’t given up yet despite the proudly display “blue finger” of those who voted. The Taliban is like St Augustine grass in the flower bed.


But that is more the rule than the exception in war, there being a tangential connection between what caused a war, what were the objectives (if any save survival), and the results:

The American South seceded over slavery, when staying with the Union would have preserved slavery in the South as the South had enough states to stop the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution.

The British opposition to Imperial Germany was triggered by a German threat to Britain’s naval superiority defined as equal or greater than any two opposing fleets, yet gave up this notion of superiority to parity in the Washington Naval Treaty on 1922.

Japan went to war over it’s desire to get their “fair share” of China, then divvied up between the English, French, Italians, Germans and Americans in extra-territorial “concessions”. FDR and the China Lobby on the Hill sent supplies and the Flying Tigers to “save” China for US commercial and Christian interests. The Communists won, everyone else lost. But after forty years of Communism in China, China has reverted in fact to more open markets than were the object of their enmity.

The victory of the North Vietnamese over the French, the Republic of Vietnam and the US failed to establish communism in Vietnam shortly after the Soviet Union collapsed and the Chinese went capitalist.

The United States Congress was unwilling to declare war on Germany on the December 8, 1941 despite Japan’s attack. Hitler solved that problem for us. There were serious objections within the US over the wisdom of the war on Germany until the Holocaust was uncovered in the Spring of ’45. WW2 is now justified on evidence found at the end of the war. The political results were determined at Casablanca, Tehran, and Potsdam, while the course of combat had it’s own logic of fire and maneuver.

The contemporary babble over whether there was or was not a connection between Saddam and Bin Ladin, and over whether there were or were not weapons of mass destruction (WMD) sounds like a domestic squabble over who did what to whom first. It isn’t useful in determining what has actually transpired, what effects there have been, or what needs to be done in the future. As usual, intent and effect are marginally connected. This is also known as the Law of Unintended Effects.

The effects of the war have had substantial impact on military doctrine, theory, and practice. Of the most significant are the role of women in combat, the recognition of the military and political value of the Guard and Reserve, the evolution (resurrection) of a new paradigm of military doctrine called Full Spectrum Warfare, and the evolution of a new paradigm in the sophistication of military operations in and beyond battle.

The old argument that women have no place in battle loudly proclaimed five years ago is silent today. Women, it has been found, can be more deadly than the male. Many volunteered for the gunner’s position on HUMMV’s and due to their lower center of gravity, holistic view of the world, and maturity have caused the early transfer of many a terrorist to Paradise.

At the beginning of expanded military operations in the Balkans and early on in Iraqi Freedom, Guard and Reserve (RC) personnel were deployed as a personnel reserve for the Active military. It has been found, however, that often RC personnel have more combat experience than their full time counter parts and additional talents from civilian life immediately useful in the protracted war of insurgency. Defense against cell phone detonated IED’s was crafted by a Reservist who worked with the cell phone industry as a civilian.

Military doctrine in place at the beginning of the war was focused on Expeditionary war which called for a quick solution for small conflagrations deemed the dominant for of battle after the Fall of the Wall. It took four years for the US military establishment, mainly it’s school system, to realize that “Protracted War” of Mao and Giap had returned with a turban and AK47.

Protracted war is multi dimensional and multi leveled including military, economic, political and social operations. This was the dominant form of war in the religious wars between Catholic and Protestant, and of the Communists until Pestroika. The new Army Field Manuals FM 3-24 on Counterinsurgency and FM 3-0 on Full Spectrum operations stress a multi handed approach in which economic stability, essential services (water, sewer, roads) , effective governance are just as important (often more) than combat operations.

LTG William Caldwell, Commander of the Combined Army Center where Army doctrine is developed appeared in the Daily Show with Jon Stewart on March 10, 2008 and described both the eclectic nature of counterinsurgency protracted war as requiring our troops in any one given area (town, village, province) to be, at the same time surveying for a water well, having tea with a tribal sheik, fixing up a market place and engage with a hostile foe with firepower.

That’s the doctrine, and that’s the new paradigm. Never in American military history have troops been required and been able to function on so wide an array of missions and skills. In short, the real “Incredibles” are our troops.

Two Vs Three Gets People Killed

LTG Chiarelli, former 1st Cav CG, blames “Security Nazis” prevent US commanders from getting vital information to their subordinates due to over-classification of enemy information in the Defense News article, January 28, 2008 :”Helping Info Flow Freely” by William Matthews. In other words, nothing has changed since the days I served in intelligence in Vietnam almost forty years ago., the day after Tet was deemed over So much for “net centric warfare”.

The day I arrived at Camp Evans in I Corps, the 1st Air Cav Division launched it’s attack into the A Shau valley. The place was virtually empty as I walked to the G1 shop for assignment. It appears that there was a project down in Saigon that needed an officer with operations experience on TDY. War is Hell, but someone has to do it, and I flew south in a Caribou to Saigon, and through Saigon in a Mitsubishi bus to Long Binh at about the same speed.

I was to be assigned to USARV G-2 I was told, for an experiment in military intelligence which experiment was dusted off from the shelves of CDEC (Combat Development and Experimentation Center – Ft Ord) after it was found that all the intelligence needed to predict Tet was already in the “system”. In fact, the IInd Field Force had acted on it’s own as had the ARVN III Corps both of which saved Saigon, while MACV still missed out on the big secret.

The experiment consisted of two radical notions. First was to put Military Intelligence officers in intelligence staff positions. This was radical departure from the normal procedure of putting those who were FNG, Short, Shot Up or Screwed Up in as S2. After years of fighting wars at Fort Swampy based on the S3 Operattions and Training Officer’s assessment of which kind of battle to fight, be it attack of a fortified position, defense of a river line, or movement to contact the unit needed. Since the actions was predetermined, there was nothing for the intelligence officer to do. After all, A Company was going to be Opfor (aka Aggressor) against B Company. Everything the S2 would do in combat was pre-determined by the S3. No sense in appointing a perfectly good officer to a do nothing job.

Another weird idea was to gather all the intelligence detachments and companies in a combat division who reported to echelons above boss, and have them report to the Division CG. To this was added a vertical array of intelligence cells called “BICCs” at each level of command from battalion to division tied together with a dedicated intelligence net that operated like a fire support net.

My job was to evaluate the “before” and “after” pictures as this program was put in effect. The first phase was one month and the “after” period was two months. My duty station was the 2/2nd Mechanized Infantry Bn (Daring) which was located on QL 13, a road nick named “Thunder Road”. So much for my hardship tour at Long Binh. In between the before and the after was a tour of Vietnam interviewing battalion and brigade staffs about intelligence operations. I visited the 25th Division then battling the VC in the Second General Offensive on the outskirts of Saigon, and the 173rd Airborne Bde operating out of LZ English on the Bong Son plains.
The difference between the before and after was that before there was no intelligence and after the was. Before we had outdated maps which had few wiggly brown lines and green that had been erased by Rome Plow. After we had the last ten years of VC activity in that area, and were able to get the latest from On High at Saigon’s intelligence centers. We had, as the term is today, “Reach Back” capabilities.

Transformation, the 400 Billion Dollar boondoggle, still hasn’t solved the basic psychological drama between S2 and S3 and from Upper to Lower echelons. As I found out in the project the basic rules of intelligence dissemination are:

1. Tell next higher only what you want them to know.
2. Tell next lower only what they need to know.
3. Tell adjacent units nothing at all

Based on over twenty years of military intelligence experience, I have found out that ninety percent of that which is classified Secret and above is already common knowledge to the enemy, and the other ten percent doesn’t exist. Over-classification is job security and ego management for intelligence officers. To be able to one-up the three in the PM briefing is sweet. Likewise, the S3 muscular types don’t trust wimps that read books, and prefer to divine enemy capabilities and intentions by divine inspiration. The tragedy is that people get killed as a result.

There has been an impressive improvement in the delivery of information and the coordination between 2 and 3 in the current unpleasantness in the Muddle East over what was the norm in Vietnam. Part of this is the improvement in communications but the biggest part is the this is the “wired” generation who have a clear understanding of what can be done.

The Brigade command and control system we went to war didn’t mesh with higher up. That was worked around. LTG Chiarelli’s CAVNet was shut down. It seems that as before we still classify the other guys stuff higher than we do our own. OPSEC is largely of value to prevent the bad guys from finding out what we are going to do. Any one who expects that the enemy doesn’t know what we are going to do is fooling with himself.

Our advantage is that the above principles are universal, and the other guy’s intel is being discounted by his opns officer. Hitler and his generals had all the clues they needed to predict Normandy. Stalin killed all the officers that told him that Hitler was going to attack, after the attack was launched. In Vietnam, the VC was so good at intercepting our radio that when a FAC or gunship showed up to do some good, the VC was ready to pop smoke at the same time we did to guide God’s wrath upon the unfaithful. We learned to pick the color of smoke at random and wait for the pilot to identify the various colors that would rise above the green stuff. Then we would tell him which was ours and to dump on the others.

And, we move quicker than they do, staying inside their operations cycle. It would be nice, however, to be able to reduce the number of enemy read our minds.

Another feature of the military decision making and intelligence process that is critical to understand and that is that commanders, ours and theirs, don’t know what they are going to do for sure in advance of the decision, and that regardless of what decision is made, Murphy’s Law applies. Gettysburg resulted as a clash over a shoe factory.

Pentagon Prepares for Cut and Run

The recent announcement that General Petraeus, senior commander in Iraq, is being considered for assignment as top NATO commander is clear proof of the proposition that COIN is antithetical to Transformation, and his success in battle threatens billions of acquisition dollars being spent on the wrong stuff. He is slated to be kicked upstairs, and out of the way.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/washington/21military.html?th&emc=th

http://gordonswar.blogspot.com/2007/10/coin-threat-to-transformation.html

At first blush, it appeared to me that “Full Spectrum Operations” was a return to some form of sanity within the Pentagon. While I have the greatest respect for Defense Secretary Gates, the Dark Forces Within the Pentagon’s bowels (certainly no higher) conduct Psychological Preparation of the (Political) Battlefield to support a “Cut and Run” from Iraq, and abandon the Iraqi people to the same fate we let the Vietnamese face.

http://gordonswar.blogspot.com/2007/12/gates-paradigm-full-spectrum-warfare.html


They are preparing for an incoming administration dedicated to the same “Anti-War” posture that led to the Killing Fields. And, at the same time, preserve Modular Madness, Rotational Warfare, and the Fantasy Combat System – all Neo-Con dream states.

http://gordonswar.blogspot.com/2007/12/armys-fantasy-combat-system-fcs.html

http://gordonswar.blogspot.com/2007/10/knives-in-gun-fights-not-good-idea.html

http://gordonswar.blogspot.com/2006/12/quadrennial-defense-rubbish.html

http://gordonswar.blogspot.com/2006/12/square-triangular-and-modular-madness.html

The billions being spent on Army Transformation are focused on an imaginary battlefield originally designed in the Fifties for a so-called “Nuclear Battlefield” while USAF airplanes fall out of the sky, and the Navy creates an imaginary “Thousand Ship Fleet” based on the presumption that our allies will rally to our cause when the Chinese decide to seize their designated defense perimeters which include the Philippines and Japan.

It is hard for me to imagine a national military command structure so inept that it’s abolition seems to be the only rational course left. This is to say that the law that created the Department of Defense be repealed, and start over. While we have won more battles that before WW2, it is likely that the increased size and operations of the services accounts for that. Despite more victorious troops, our record for winning wars has gone into the toilet. Which is where DoD needs to go.

Or, maybe there are some serious Philbys in there.

Rough Riders Needed

Stopping Stop Loss raised a number of questions about how to staff the force, with some decrying a perceived drop in quality of new troops, and others calling for a draft which at this time is just the ticket to rally the anti-American Left.

I was asked recently by our local radio station, KTRK, if there wasn’t some other solution steeped in our historical playbook. Of course there is, I replied. Haven’t you heard of the 1st US Volunteer Cavalry, the Rough Riders that TR led up San Juan Hill? TR raised this regiment of cavalry combining his buddies in Ivy Leaguery with some leathery friends from the Old West. Look at pictures of TR in his uniform (Night in the Museum) and his collar brass says USV for US Volunteers. In fact, the raising of regiments was the default American Way of War well into WW2 before the advent of a large standing army.

Where and how can this be done, the Pentagon would wonder to which any Guard or Reserve unit commander could reply with a snort that raising armies, fleets, and air crews is business as usual. A regular service commander is issued his or her troops, while the default Guard or Reserve commander has to stamp his unit out of the ground. When I go to the movies here in Houston, I see ads for the local Air Guard Fighter Squadron. I raised eighty percent of the 5th PSYOP Group (Strategic) in DC within one year of it’s activation back another life time ago.

The fact that the Pentagon raised private military units to avoid calling up the Guard and Reserve units trained for the purpose (and their field grade commanders which might ruin the morale of those on the command list) attests to the fact that units in deed can be stamped out of the ground given proper incentives. In fact, the down side of raising volunteer units historically was that some regiments paid more than others created some healthy competition between units.

Volunteer units made no pretense of sticking around after the war, and hence no threat to established rice bowls. Historically, Regular officers and noncoms were enticed to add starch and spice to the mix of talented amateurs and retreads. This is the way that America used to win it’s wars before careerism raised it’s multiple rotational heads and substituted fighting wars instead of winning them.

TA in Terror, Pt 2 - Stamp Collecting

Narrative Analysis, the analysis of the story form through which ideologies is expressed and absorbed is a methodology by which the strengths, weakness, vulnerabilities, fracture lines, and potency of the ideology and organizations based on them can be engaged. In other words, money talks, but bullshit walks. And in Iraq and throughout the Muddle East, there is a lot of lethal bullshit walking around.

Previously I introduced the notion of Transactional Analysis (TA) as a tool to decode the basic bullshit game system of the dysfunctional Heroic Villain, based on his/her adoption of Heroic roles to mask Villainous roles such as the Rescuer who turns into a Manipulator to gain or retain control of things. As seen on TV a thief may deem himself a victim which entitles him to rob and/or steal and as such act as Bitch or Bastard, which invites Prosecution from the authorities, which returns the thief into a victim again. It’s the drama or Karpmann triangle.

At each role switch, TA tells us that there is a payoff, a gotcha, or prize for a successful role switch. The thief gets a payoff in terms of the cash stolen, but most thieves blow off the cash, as that isn’t the real objective which comes with his arrest and he gets what TA calls a “Stamp” which in this case is an arrest which entitles him to play victim again. That’s the Brat in full flower, and most of us know Brats that are continuously getting in trouble, and they love it as it gives them the attention that a Child needs. The ignored child doesn’t survive, and getting in trouble is a way of survival.

The process of gaining a Stamp is called a Game which when repeated habitually becomes a Script at the end of which all the Stamps can be cashed in for a free Grand Prize. TA classifies Stamps by color: White stamps are righteous stamps, Red stamps are anger stamps, Brown stamps are … brown, and as many colors as the analyst can imagine. The Narration of Al Qaeda is Red Stamp collecting with each Suicide Attack, which Stamps can be turned into a free White Stamp of Righteousness in the name of Allah. I have doubts that Allah has duly certified this Game system, as I doubt God has certified its Christian counterpart(s). Or Sunni or Shia.

While this may seem whimsical, I find it more than disturbing as I see the daily news with frantic families rushing blown up children to crowded hospitals, children in Africa with swollen bellies and flies in the eyes. Or American soldiers with missing parts yearning to get back into battle with what amounts to a murderous enemy bent on collecting Red and White stamps to fill dents in their Inner Child.

And that’s why they call it War, and War is Hell.

When Jane Comes Marching Home Again, Does She Run For Office?

A standing long service professional military force and victory in war is a conflict of interest like psychological counseling and curing the patient is for the shrink. The rice bowl is broken when the patient is cured or the war is won. In both cases, successful professional practices are to work on the problem, fight the battles, make progress, but short of solving the problem.

The Italian Condottieri hired by Italian city states in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth centuries were extremely well trained, equipped, and led but managed to develop a tactical system that maintained the payroll at minimum loss of blood or decisive action. Machiavelli despaired of their cost and indecision and so recommended in his “On War” that the best military for the city state was a well regulated militia of the best of it’s citizens. French firepower and disregard for French casualites under King Charles VIII eventually ended the reign of the Condottieri.

Perhaps it is time to return to those golden years of yesterday where the ambitious warrior would ride off to war with a mind to a triumphant return from victory in war so he(she) can run for office, get the prettiest girl/richest man in town, the best paying job, and life time bragging rights. While transitional rotations emulate the cycle, there is no requirement for actually winning anything, except survival. Statistical allocation and normalization readily papers over any embarrassing lack of booty.

A large standing professional army was only adopted around1979 with the post Vietnam purge of reservists on extended active duty and abolition of the draft. A post Vietnam mustering out of Guard and Volunteer units, the normal custom., was moot as the Guard and Volunteer units were not called. The rotation of Guard and Reserve units and personnel as an “operational reserve” precludes any messy purge to maintain the purity of essence of the true warrior force. It also precluded a decisive victory.

In order to protect the closed nature of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Full Time Warriors, it will be necessary to blame the non-union Weekend Warriors for failing to be effectively mobilized, and to reduce that apparent threat to the continued largesse of the largely ignorant Congress.

Sunday Punditry misses the point

The Sunday pundits meeting the press or facing the nation assert with good reason that the reasons that we as a nation face serious defeat in Iraq due to the incompetence of leadership and inability of the military to adapt to the conditions of counter insurgency. They say that the military misread the Iraqi mind, failed to have a reconstruction plan, unable to train a new Iraqi military, and obsessed with conventional war of the Cold War. The truth of the matter is that these were failures of the Pentagon, and that the services themselves had the correct capabilities and doctrine, mostly in the Guard and Reserves which were committed piecemeal and ineffectually. And in so doing, double crossed the President.

The Pentagon has a management culture and way of doing business that bears little relationship to military staff and command procedures. The military themselves are rotated in and out of the Pentagon with too short a tour to have lasting effect, likewise with most appointed officials. The real power in the Pentagon is wielded by long serving civil servants including the formidable clerical staff and the Machiavellian super-grades who maintain the continuity of policy regardless of the intent of the military and political assigned there.

As in the case of the courtiers of Versailles, the Tsar, Imperial Rome or the Forbidden City, survival depends on flattery of the powerful and on assuaging their insecurities, by raising the powerful above the decision making process which the courtier and bureaucrat is only to willing to assume. In this way, the Pentagon’s civil service treats it’s clients as a closed union shop, like ancient nobility, which excludes the lesser and less noble. Such is the case of the Guard and Reserves who are treated as seasonal workers fit only for non union, less noble work. This process, in Pentagonese, is called Transformation.

Transformation, like the Emperors New Clothes, is aimed at transforming the military from something that used to win wars against real enemies, to one that battles imaginary ones, by creating standardized expeditionary packets of troops that rotate to and from the battlefield so that every gets a crack at being up to bat. We no longer hear of campaigns like Tet, the Bulge, Normandy, or Meuse Argonne, but of Rotations 1, 2, 3 or 4. Imagine WW2 being fought with two thirds of the Army resting up for a rotation to the Pacific or the ETO.

The Pundits assert that the military doesn’t have the capacity to win this war. They do, but it’s being kept out of the fight. The solution is simple. Stop unit rotation so that the commanders on the ground can achieve a stable and consistent presence. Mobilize the necessary Guard and Reserve units as such for the duration. By pass the Pentagon by creating a direct link to a single theater commander which includes the necessary incident management system to coordinate all government agencies involved.

The real tragedy for our military is that they have never been so well trained, equippped, or led by their field commanders nor have they ever had such high morale and esprit de corps than in any previous war, far more than the "greatest generation", and that their best efforts have been tossed like used toilet paper by a wacked out puzzle palace. Even today where the troops outside the Beltway are training to best practices for Full Spectrum Warfare, inside the Beltway the golden cockroaches and embedded charlatans make a full court press to achieve "Transformation", already proven to be a prescription for defeat.

And now the Loony Left, unaware that the Third International is privatized, goes after the troops not the nuts by Shutting down JROTC in Fog/Fag City. The last time the Left got their pants in a tie-dyed twist, military retirees lost thier medical care which took thirty years to recover.